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Linux.com: How Linux Boots

"James takes time to understand how Linux boots and what's
running behind the scenes!"

"When you turn on your computer, it will take a few seconds
or even a few minutes to begin normal operations. The operating
system loads up dozens of programs to check and setup before the
user takes control. We will look at how this works under Linux,
below."

"The first event after the bios has checked the hardware in a
basic way, is the first real program loaded off the hard disk. If
you are booting a linux based system, this is usually a boot loader
like grub or lilo. We will just look at lilo in this article."